Looking for PCIe/High-Speed Digital IC Graduation Project Ideas with Strong Industry Relevance

Hi everyone,

I'm an Electronics and Communications Engineering undergraduate from Egypt, and my team is currently looking for a graduation project in Digital IC Design & Verification.

Our goal is to choose a project that is technically challenging, aligns with what semiconductor companies actually work on, and increases our chances of finding an industry mentor or sponsorship.

We're currently interested in topics such as:

PCIe

UCIe

High-speed SerDes

DDR Memory Controllers

Ethernet

RISC-V SoC

AI Accelerators

Hardware Security/Crypto Accelerators

Our background includes:

Verilog/SystemVerilog

Digital Design

RTL Design

FPGA

Basic Verification (moving toward UVM)

We're looking for advice on:

If you were supervising a graduation project today, what project would you recommend?

Which projects have the highest industry value for Digital Design & Verification engineers?

Are there open-source PCIe/UCIe/SoC projects suitable for undergraduate teams? What specifications, books, courses, or GitHub repositories should we study before starting? If you've worked in industry, what project would make you think, "I'd interview this team"? We'd really appreciate recommendations from engineers working in ASIC, Verification, FPGA, or SoC development. Thanks!